EVENT #5: SOVEREIGN CITIZENS (GODSBLOOD)

[aionmods]

Sovereign Citizens

GODSBLOOD

At the height of the Sovereign's moon, Vaeka Lovenskol's execution is announced. Outside of the City Hall, a dignitary of Achamoth is flanked by an entourage of Kenoma, reading the words of Regent from an unfurled letter: Vaeka stands accused to conspiring against the Regent and abetting the fugitive menace known as the Pleroma. Though the details are not made public, rumors spread quickly, some far more wild than the actual truth. The full truth, after all, is something only the Regent's agents and the Pleroma themselves know, and even to them the manner of her exposure is unclear.

Though losing a proud daughter of an influential family, there seems to be little that the people of Godsblood can do besides accept it. After all, they are still a city of the Regent's empire, and for all the freedom they've enjoyed, there are limits. If she was truly aiding the Pleroma, the sworn enemies of the Regent - and in an organized manner, if the rumors are to be believed - can they truly object? Or would challenging the Regent's claim simply invite more death?

As with many things, the families of Godsblood are torn. Tensions are thick for the five days leading up to Vaeka's appointed execution by hanging, with everyone having an opinion and few wanting to go on record talking about it too loudly. As such, the people's frustrations come out in other ways. Bloodites are uncharacteristically unfriendly to strangers in this time, keeping to their own and treating everyone else with overt skepticism.

Those that have arrived as part of the Regent's official envoy, or seen guarding Vaeka, will receive a particularly icy reception. No longer are the Kenoma curious wanderers on personal business. Now, they are here as the hands of the Regent; few of the Godsblood citizens are foolish enough to challenge them outright, but they are ever an honest people.

Early on, the Kenoma and the rest of the Achamite contingent sent with them will be able to take over a jail in downtown Godsblood to hold Vaeka until her execution, clearing out all other Bloodite prisoners and employees in the meantime. This means they have a relatively secure position to guard their prisoner from, which is a good thing; after all, the Regent did outright invite the Pleroma to stop them, and Pleroma are nothing if not stubborn.

EXECUTION DAY

After five agonizing days of waiting and several high visible conflicts between the Pleroma and Kenoma, finally the hour of Vaeka's execution arrives. A gallows is set outside of City Hall, ready to welcome its newest victim, and a massive crowd has gathered in an spirit of anxious anticipation. Some worry that violence may break out in the streets, even without the Pleroma's agitation, but gradually the minutes tick by and the gallows remain empty.

First one minutes passes. Then five. Then fifteen. Slowly, it becomes clear to the people of Godsblood that Vaeka will not be arriving. Are the rumors true? Has she been saved? Have the Pleroma been successful, despite all odds?

As the hours pass and the crowds disperse, Vaeka Lovenskol is not officially reported as either living or dead. Fortunately, Godsblood is a place where information has a way of getting around, whether those in charge like it or not. Some are saying that she was seen being whisked away as if by powerful magic, following a bloody fight at the jail in which she was being held. Where did she go? Maybe her supposed connections to the forest people did her good, some surmise.

The days following Vaeka's failed execution carry a strange and uncertain energy. Where before there was tension and distrust, Godsblood now finds itself in a surreal reality where the Regent's word is apparently not absolute. Then again, do they really want a repeat performance?

QUESTIONS

What is the best way for Aions to travel to Godsblood?
For Pleroma, this is very easy, as they are likely to either already live there or be able to easy take Greentruth's portal. For Kenoma, they may come directly from Achamoth by boat as part of the Regent's envoy or arrive via Eustace's portal which is set up in a shed a fairly long jaunt outside of town. Once there has been some time to get established, Misa will be setting up another portal leading straight to the prison where Vaeka is being stored.

Are the Kenoma permitted by the Regent to kill other Godsblood citizens?
Though the Kenoma are authorized to kill any Bloodites that try to physically fight them, they are expected to keep things clean. The Regent prefers to only punish the guilty, and having the lines be clear will create less of a hassle in the future. Generally, Godsblood is not in a state where physical resistance is likely to happen unprovoked.

Comments

[wolof]

[ It burns, it hurts, Akua can feel her body, pinned beneath the tree -- how it squished, and collapsed -- she can feel her body fighting and struggling, but the tree is large, and she knew it would be. She should have -- she thought -- been less prideful, and stayed back.

She fights, even so. A growl of frustration, of pain, escaped from beneath the tree, but she's still here. She died twice before, what was another one? And she would not go out without a fight. She looked up at Howl's frame, golden eyes alight with fire, anger -- respect, perhaps -- and her mouth moved, one word -- burn.

It was an easy spell, but through the blinding, searing pain, she could manage that. It's a working -- a twist on the one the academy had -- fire that lit white hot, and seared its way to Howl, only to explode on contact. It's meant to burn and raze an army if necessary.

She wanted to take him down with her. She wanted to make him burn, hurt and wither, and her flames are hot -- nearly blue, when she cast them, almost an unending wave that hurled themselves toward Howl, lighting and exploding on contact, to try to make him seared from her own pain and fury. ]

[galdorleod]

[ He only has to win. That single thought loops in his mind at a blistering speed, repeating a dozen times in the mere seconds it takes for all of this to come to its resolution. As Howl's talons crash through the branches, he can see his victory at hand — even as the sharp points of splintered wood drive into his flesh through the force of his weight, and his shattered leg splatters blood across the leaves, and the fire —

Fire. Not just any burst of flame that any wizard could conjure, but a massive, overwhelming conflagration. It slams into Howl like storm winds, singeing his thick coat of feathers and reaching the bloated flesh underneath. Another monstrous screech cuts through the noise, now completely devoid of any humanity at all. Memories of the war in Ingary flash before his eyes, of bombs falling on homes, and of wizards throwing away everything in service of the king, and of airships exploding in hellish plumes of fire as his talons tore through their hulls. The fire back then hurt, too, although not as much as it should have. Howl's magic was tempered in fire, after all. The fire of a fire demon, but fire nonetheless. Calcifer was there with him, during every one of his foolish forays into the battlefield. Calcifer, the source of his power... his oldest friend. His only friend. Now just as dead and gone as everyone else in his world, nothing more than a memory, the same as the war, and the other wizards, and his castle, and Markl, and Sophie...

The fire rages around him; every feather on his hulking body alights in a flash. And yet... it does not overwhelm him. The pain is there, but it isn't like the pain when her fireball hit his wing. It isn't even like the pain he felt when he let out that scream an instant ago. With each hundredth of a second that passes, it winds down into a tepid ache. Through the fire, Howl contorts his neck to look down at Akua with one piercing blue bird's eye, enlarged and bulging out from the mop of long feathers hanging from the top of his head. His talons find their mark, plunging into her body and flexing mercilessly to tear her entrails apart. ]

[wolof]

[ Akua had a plan, of course. The plan had been, with the fire to hold him back, the next slide of magic to his wings, to burn them away with acid and fire, to make him useless, to make that beast understand that there was little he would do, with a sorceress of her caliber. She was the Calamity, a sorceress of Praes and second only to a man who would become a god. There was nothing she could not do. She was the fire and power, the soul of the Age of Wonders, and had made a weapon so powerful that there had been a war, while her corpse had still been warm -- for control of it.

Her fingers moved, as Howl lunged in, and she was half-way through the spell -- an unnecessary show Akua had taken on, around those who didn't use magic -- and she had been too proud, too over-confident to stop, when he leaned forward, his eye enlarged and boring into her.

Her teeth gnashed together, and she spit a glob of blood toward him, furious, it was acidic, a final shot although weak -- and when his talons found her --

She gasped. No, it was no knife like Catherine's that had bored into her stomach twice now. There was no comforting kiss, like the last time she'd been killed. This was hard, and cruel, and her body -- shifted, slipped, as the darkness closed on her, she found herself cold and angry, a bit like the old her, as her body dissipated, leaving only a heart-shaped shard falling to the ground. ]